Final Projectamundo

I was walking to work about a month and a half ago when I realized that I always walked the same route. I looked up every street to the right of my path and realized I had only been down about half of them. I decided to walk up a random street and cut over to my normal path further up. It was a strange experience because to be on a street in my neighborhood of three years that I never new existed. After a while I was taking all these different random paths to work, to the bars, to the train, to wherever I was going. My final project was inspired by this incident and the Luis Borges short story, Garden of Forking Paths. What I'm attempting to do is start a novella at Rittenhouse Square that will begin in a different way depending on which of the four streets you travel from. Each of the four story lines will continue to the next intersection; at which point each of the four story lines will again branch off. The story will weave its way throughout the entire city in this manner. So, if you were leaving Rittenhouse square taking Market St. to Samson St., the same story would have a completely different set of events than if, say, you walked down Locust St. to Panama St. The nature of the street will also affect the nature of the story; so, if the street is swanky, and has a number of fancy shops, the story will reflect that. Also, if you were to go to an intersection, walk around the block to get to the next intersection, or straight on to the next intersection, you would still logically arrive at the same conclusion; that is to say, no matter how you reach an intersection the story will always have that same conclusion, although the events that lead to it will be different. Because of the time limits attached to this project, I can’t branch off at every intersection—it would probably take years. For this assignment I will go straight down four different paths, never branching, but arriving at four different conclusions. On one path, I will take the story around the block and to the next intersection to explain that. The Project will be entitled The Philadelphia Street Novel, the story will be entitled, The Nefarious History of Baron Von Krackenfelts, and His Talented Son. I hope this may help people to explore different routes. As far as the technical aspects, the structure of the project, I was thinking about cell phone activated applications, but I feel that this will only reach a limited number people, it would also exclude those who did not have the technology. What I’ve decided on is setting up boxes that explain the project hold the sheet of paper that corresponds with that site on that path. Ideally, if I ever got a grant to do this project I would set up boxes that were similar to newspaper machines only smaller. These would contain the page for that site. The participant, or reader, would pay like 10 cents for each page to help with the cost of paper/ink. Here’s a rough diagram of what this project might look like.